Saturday, May 03, 2008

pressure is building up...but still taking it easy...

Sure, sure it haz been a while yet again (kuss legyen dudi), but today I dedicate to catching up:

...and so we continue:

Stockholm, Sverige

As so we begin with the narrative that Sweden (and the rest of Scandinavia) is famous for its excessively stringent culture of rules surrounding alcohol. There are only designated places where you can buy booze, or if out on the piss in town, do expect to be extorted when buying a beer or a simple drink at any of the bars. To demonstrate the situation, please refer to the receipt above from one of these so called "Systembolaget" shops: they have the monopoly to sell wine, beer, cider, spirits ect. The reasons people don't really talk about, but it is obvious that these people here do like their drink, putting it straight forward, they are fucking alkiez, and need to be looked after :) (c.c. 11 SEK to 1 GBP)


The national theater, golden plated!


Xenia and Lior preparing the snitzel dinner (above), and Wallaceberger as Chairman of the first Paideia feast. Together with the duty free "liquid gold" Teachers I bought over the evening was spent rather pleasantly, finishing off all the whiskey and getting absolutely shitfaced :)).


When arriving to Skavska Airport, some 90 km outside of Stockholm one was delighted to see a serious amount of timber and huge pieces of dark rock everywhere (very Warcraft style). On this latitude (the same as Aberdeen, Scotland) the plantage tends to be taiga style, that is lots and lots of green pine, but interestingly the majority of the houses are still made out of bricks, rather than using the copious amount of wood they have (probably an invaluable source of domestic income for the already damn rich swedes), contrary to the ways in Norway, where as to my recollection 70% of people live in wooden houses. OK, so leaving Cam on a mid April Thursday morning to Stockholm was exciting, as always when embarking on journeys to places you've never been before. The flight waz circa two hours from Stansted, the plane was packed, but the stewardesses on this flight were very polite and pretty too, so it did start of well... After arriving the journey to T-Centralen (downtown Stockholm) took about an hour and a half, so before getting on the coach I did some food shopping at the airport, and so for lunch I managed to acquire a reindeer sandwich and some Daim chocolate (in memoriam IKEA) for the trip, both very tasty and a good combination. However do be advised when paying by bank card for petty items, they charge a few kronas towards transaction cost (the bastards:). Arriving to the central station Wallace was already there waiting, so no time lost, we headed in to town...or firstly back to the apartment that is, where we met up with Lior, the Israeli flatmate and headed of for some additional food shopping down Willies Food Mart, before hiking in to town.



View from the top of the TV tower.


The city started to turn blue for some reason...spring time!


"...excuse me, but aren't you... ?"

Stockholm is situated over many small little islands, so in between them we had the great advantage taking the boat, rather then the usual way of transport...


...check out those dark rocks...



Building the city never ends, just like elsewhere...


The garden of the Stockholm Mayor's Office.


Cambridge Cyber Passover



Selwyn College Park


Castle Hill


Sulchan Aruch ze Pesach


Setting up online.